


Sugar Sweet

by GoldandScarlett



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: (i just learned the official tag oops), Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/F, coffee shop AU, there is absolutely no need for Mako to be in this fic but i like him so too bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24298534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldandScarlett/pseuds/GoldandScarlett
Summary: Jacqui Green pretends to be suave and sexy while failing to make a milkshake for an international pop star.
Relationships: Jacqui Green/Aria Joie
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14





	Sugar Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> I got a job at a coffee shop specifically so that I could write well researched coffee shop aus, and now that I've been laid off for pandemic reasons, this and making matcha lattes for my mother are truly all it is good for. (Also I'm really neurotic about typos while simultaneously an incredibly careless typer so if you see one please do tell me.

“Excuse me. Do you have a printer?” 

Jacqui had been cleaning grounds out of the espresso machine, and hadn’t heard anyone coming up to the counter. The voice startled her more than she’d like to admit, a rare enough occurance that she would have been a little annoyed anyways, even without the audicity of asking such a stupid question.

“What-,” she started, whirling around a little viciously, and then the words died in her throat, because the woman standing on the other side of the counter, laptop crooked in one arm, was absurdly beautiful, admittedly in a weird superfan sort of look alike way but still, Jacqui didn’t mind a little weird coming from the right person, and damn could this girl pull it off. Jacqui shook herself. So whatever. She was super hot. She was still entitled, and she sucked. Focus, Jacqui. 

Still, when she spoke again, her words lacked any of their former heat. Damn. “We’re a coffee shop,” she said. 

The woman accepted this information amiably enough that Jacqui allowed herself to hope that the question had maybe been a last desperate attempt to get a paper printed before a deadline, and now the woman was going to apologize, and admit that she would never even have asked if it weren’t life or death and shuffle off to one of the corner tables to await her end in quiet despair and then maybe Jacqui would bring her a consolation coffee on the house and chat with her until she stopped looking miserable and started laughing instead and then the day would end with her tearfully admitting that she would fail a hundred papers if it meant she got to meet Jacqui. 

Instead she said, “Some coffee shops have printers, though.” Okay, so not that then. At least her tone wasn’t accusatory, although it was certainly persistent. 

Jacqui crafted and rejected several responses to this but the only thoroughly neutral thing she could find to say ended up being “This one doesn’t,” which was not only a deeply lame thing to say, it also sounded a little passive aggressive and even though this girl still technically sucked, she was apparently hot enough that Jacqui’s brain was not going to let her be actually mean to her. 

The woman didn’t seem to mind though, or else she was pretending not to notice. She flashed Jacqui a gleaming smile, and set her laptop gently on the counter. “Oh. Okay! Can I just get a Pink Pleiades, then?” 

“We aren’t a Constellation Coffee,” Jacqui said, or at least, was pretty sure she said. Most of her brain power was at this point occupied with playing the woman’s smile on loop, the rest to making sure her face revealed none of these inner workings.

Perhaps her voice had come off a little gruffer than she’d intended, because the woman’s smile faltered for the first time since she’d started this ill-advised conversation. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought that was just like, a drink coffee shops had.”

Which was ridiculous because what? Did this girl not leave her house? Or her Constellation Coffee shop, Jacqui supposed. She should, she felt, really be fuming at this point, but the woman looked so embarrassed, and so so hot, and she found herself, against her will, being almost charmed by this woman’s obscene level of naivete, even as she mentally tried to figure out if she’d ever been to a Constellation Coffee with a printer. “If you know what’s in it I can try to make you one,” Jacqui offered, even though she was pretty sure Pink Pleiadeses had coconut milk and equally sure that she didn’t.

The woman’s face brightened again, and Jacqui briefly allowed her quiet moment of self congratulation to drown out the disappointment she felt towards herself over how easily she was apparently charmed by a pretty face. 

“I uh, don’t actually know what’s in them?” the woman said, flushing. “I like them ‘cause they’re pink.”

Jacqui made one last, half-hearted attempt to tell herself that she did not find any of this cute. Unfortunately, she was a tragically bad liar. Ah well. Might as well go all in then. “I can do ya a strawberry milkshake?” she said. 

“Oh! Yeah, okay. And uh,” She winced and added, almost apologetically, “I have to order three shots of espresso and then can you fill the rest of the cup with whipped cream? I feel like I have to tell you that that one’s for a friend. He’s helping me with a project so I said I’d buy him a coffee.” 

“You could tell him that didn’t count as coffee,” Jacqui offered, and the woman rewarded her with a loud tinkling laugh. “What’s he helping you with?” she added, emboldened by the laugh. “Is it worth this sort of association?”

“Unfortunately,” the woman said, wrinkling her nose. “I’m organizing a benefit and he’s-” she paused, as though considering whether the word really applied before saying, “Helping? That was what I wanted to print, actually. We made a flyer.” She turned her computer around so that Jacqui could see the screen, which was open to a file featuring a woman standing on stage and triumphantly holding a microphone. Jacqui was pretty sure there was a laser show going on in the background. 

“That looks like a concert poster,” she said, sliding a cup under the espresso machine and reaching into the undercounter freezer for the strawberry ice cream. 

“It’s a benefit and it’s a concert. Like a benefit concert. Mako, that’s the friend, is helping me plan out staging and lighting and stuff.” 

“Oh yeah?” Jacqui said. “And what’s your plan for getting international pop sensation Aria Joie to perform at this thing?” 

The woman stared at her, looking nonplussed. “Um,” she said. 

But Jacqui continued cheerfully along before she could say anything more. “Like are you going to get her number through your mutual hairdresser?” she asked. “It’s cute hair by the way. Looks really good on you.” 

The woman blushed again, “Thanks,” she said. “But I’m not a superfan, or whatever you think I am.” 

“You trying to tell me you went with that hairstyle by accident? Look, I’m not judging or anything. I love her stuff, too. Although I thought her latest song was a little corporate-”

“I  _ know _ ,” the woman cut in, sounding oddly excited by the comment. “I told them- But listen. I’m not stealing Aria Joie’s look. I’m-”

“Aria!” The voice came from a table by the window, issued by a guy wearing a neon orange bomber jacket and waving his arms with maybe a little more animation that was really required. 

“Mako,” the woman said, sounding like she couldn’t decide between amused and exasperated. “What’s up?”

“I have updates for you!” The guy said, coming over to join her. “Concert updates!” He punctuated this last bit by waggling his fingers.

“And they couldn’t have waited ‘til I got back to the table?” 

“Well they could have. But I was bored. And also I wanted my coffee.” 

Jacqui grabbed the cup she’d deposited beneath the espresso machine on autopilot, and squirted whipped cream into it, before handing the cup to neon guy, Mako. Mako who had called the maybe-Aria by the actual name of Aria. But maybe he was in on it somehow? Maybe it was a prank? Or maybe the woman was so into Aria Joie that she made her friends call her by the name. That would be really weird, even for Jacqui. She considered the ramifications of this hypothetical for a moment. Nope. She was still into her. 

“You look like you would order this,” Jacqui said, because it was easier than trying to synthesize all the new information she’d just been given. 

“Thanks!” said Mako, grabbing a spoon from the box on the counter and digging out a blob of whipped cream.

“She wasn’t complimenting you,” Maybe-Aria told him. 

Mako shrugged, and shoveled another spoonful of whipped cream. “Anyways,” he said, brandishing the spoon at Maybe-Aria. “Cass called, and they say they’re in. Well, actually first they said your plan was terrible and they didn’t want any part of it, and then they said you should have just called them straight off and then they said, never mind they would just redo it and then there was a lot of like? Rustling? I think they were making a diagram? There might have been graph paper. Their graph paper rustles a little louder over the phone than their other planning paper but the connection was bad so I couldn’t be sure. Anyways, you got Cass.”

“Great,” said Maybe-Aria. “Thanks.” 

“So,” said Mako, hanging on the o. “What are you talking about?” He leaned against the counter and grinned up at both of them in a way that felt deliberately antagonistic, but could have, Jacqui supposed, just been his face. He was after all, wearing  _ so much _ neon, and Jacqui was prone to making negative snap judgments about people who wore a lot of neon and ordered espresso and whipped cream. 

Maybe-Aria sighed, like maybe she had come to the same conclusion about Mako’s behavior, but was resigned to it. “I was seeing if this place had a printer we could use,” she told him. 

“Oh,” said Mako. “Do they? Wait, actually Aria. Listen-” 

“You keep calling her that!” Jacqui interrupted, a little strangled maybe, but she thought she managed it pretty well all things considered. Plus, she was annoyed that Mako had brought the printer back up. The whole thing was way less charming coming from a neon fashion disaster, and not a pretty but maybe crazy but also very nice woman. Possibly, she was fixating on the wrong thing here.

“Sorry,” Mako said. He shot Aria an apologetic look. “Were we keeping that on the downlow?”

“It’s fine, Mako,” Aria said. “We were just discussing that actually. Between the two of us,” she added, in a way that felt pointed, but Jacqui couldn’t tell if it was because she wanted Mako to leave or because she wanted Mako to not shout to the whole coffee shop that she was a pop star. 

Before she could figure it out Maybe-Aria turned her attention back to her and said, “I can show you my student i.d.?” she offered. 

“Yeah, okay,” Jacqui said, even though she was probably breaking the code of customer service in some way. “I’ll look at that.”

The woman took out her wallet, and slid a shiny plastic card onto the counter which Jacqui pried up with her fingernails and held up to her face to scrutinize. Jacqui had seen enough September Institute i.d.s to know that this one wasn’t fake, and she recognized the distinct smile of the coffee shop woman flattened onto the card. Next to the picture was the name “Aria Joie,” written in incongruously bland block letters, printed over a graduating year. Jacqui starred at it, and then back at the woman at the counter, and then back at the i.d.

“Holy shit,” she said, a little louder than she’d intended. “You’re Aria Joie.” 

Aria cast a furtive glance over her shoulder, but when no one seemed to be paying them any mind she relaxed and turned back to Jacqui, with a half-hearted shrug. “In the flesh,” she said. 

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I go to college here?” Aria tapped the photo on the i.d. lightly with her finger, and Jacqui realized she’d been clutching it for kind of a long time, and should probably give it back. She set it back down on the counter, and Aria slid it back into her wallet. 

Jacqui’s question had really been aimed more as to why Aria Joie was in this admittedly second rate coffee shop, trying to bum printing off a minimum wage employee, and not having her butler calligraphy whatever it was onto hand scraped sheepskin parchment with ground diamond ink, or whatever it was rich people did, but she supposed that was a good enough question too, now that she thought about it. 

_ “Why _ ?” she said. 

Mako, who Jacqui had pretty much forgotten about, burst out laughing. Aria though, looked like she was legitimately confused by the question. “Why do I go to college? I don't want to just be a pop star forever. I mean. It’s fun, and I love making music, and it’s good to have a platform, but you know. I want to enact real lasting change?” 

“Huh,” said Jacqui. She mulled this over for a moment, trying to come up with something intelligent and thoughtful to say in response to this. Instead she blurted out, “Don’t you have your own printer?” 

Aria grinned. “I do. I just don't really want anyone to know about this yet. I mean, you heard my last song. This isn’t exactly in line with the Aria Joie I’m supposed to be. So I couldn’t use the one at headquarters and the Constellation Coffee on campus has a printer but it isn’t super discreet either.”

Well, Jacqui thought, somewhat hysterically, if nothing else, she had at least learned the answer to her question about whether or not any Constellation Coffees even had printers. 

“We were gonna go to the Kinkos,” Mako cut in, through a mouthful of whipped cream, “but we have a collective life long ban.” 

“Oh my god! Don’t bring that up!” Aria thrust her laptop into Mako’s arms, and shoved him in the general direction of their table. “Go sit down,” she said. “And don’t mess with those music files.”

“I was just adding more bass!” Mako insisted. “I know you don’t like the kazoo solos!” But he went back to their table. Jacqui watched him open Aria’s computer back up and start messing with it in a way that looked seriously suspicious to her, but Aria, when she glanced back, seemed unperturbed.

She rolled her eyes, and put a hand to her temple. “Sorry,” she said. “Mako.” She seemed to think this was explanation enough and Jacqui, from what little she’d seen of Mako, was willing to agree with her. 

Aria opened her mouth like she wanted to say something else, and then closed it again and tapped her fingers absently against the counter. Jacqui recognized the beat of one of the songs from her first albums, one of those peppy dance numbers you threw in after a ballad to keep from bringing the mood of the album down. It had always been one of Jacqui’s favorites. Jacqui liked dancing. 

She wondered, distantly, if it would be out of line to voice these thoughts. Aria did, after all, seem disinclined to leave, and Jacqui was flattered, and a little freaked out, and then she remembered that she’d never finished the strawberry milkshake she was supposed to be making, and cursed herself for reading a bunch of wistful nonsense into a customer wanting her order. And what was in a strawberry milkshake anyways? Ice cream. Strawberries. Milk?? Probably??

“Oh,” she said, keeping her voice customer service-light. “Let me finish this for ya.”

Aria’s face squished up in confusion, like she’d also maybe forgotten about the milkshake, and then she said, “Oh! Yeah! Right, thanks,” and leaned a little too far over the counter. 

Jacqui spooned ice cream into a blender with forced concentration. “So. An illegal benefit concert?” she said. “That’s kinda hardcore.” 

“Thanks,” said Aria. “We’ll see how it works.” 

Jacqui poured some milk into the blender, and then some strawberry sauce. She squinted at it for a moment, decided this felt far too uncomplicated to be right, and added some liquid sugar. Okay, that had probably been too much liquid sugar. Maybe some more milk would neutralize it? She poured more in and checked to see if Aria was looking suspicious yet, but Aria was just standing there with a serene smile on her face. 

“I’m sure it will go great,” Jacqui said. 

“You can come,” Aria said. “I mean if you want. I’ll give you a ticket.”

Jacqui chose that exact moment to flip the switch on the blender, which was a good choice, because her heart had just plummeted into her stomach and frozen there, and she needed the few moments of overpowering blender noise to recover herself. 

“Oh yeah?” Jacqui asked, once the noise had subsided and she trusted herself to be able to speak like a normal human being. 

“Yeah,” Aria said. “In fact-” Her mouth quirked into a cunning smirk. “Go out for drinks with me, and I can get you in for free.”

“Oh, you can?” said Jacqui. 

Aria shrugged. “I know a guy,” she said. “What do you say?”

“Depends,” Jacqui said, even as she felt the adrenaline building back up in her stomach. Who’s buying the drinks?”

“I am,” Aria said. She was grinning in a way that meant she knew Jacqui wasn’t going to refuse her. 

“Free concert. Free drinks,” Jacqui said, keeping her tone casually neutral and knowing a grin was cutting across her face, betraying her. She didn’t care. “Seems like a pretty sweet deal.” 

Aria set both her elbows on the counter and leaned forward on them. “ _ Well _ ,” she drawled. “I’m pretty sweet.” 

Jacqui laughed and grabbed a sharpie. She scribbled her number onto a plastic cup, poured the dubious looking milkshake into it, and handed the concoction to Aria. “Here,” she said. “Text me; I’ll be there.” 

“This is the best milkshake,” Aria said. She took a sip and her face wrinkled, and then quickly smoothed itself. Jacqui saw her eyes go, for the first time since she’d come to counter, up to the menu board, where Jacqui had meticulously written each drink they had available in colorful chalk, and then been forced by her manager to accentuate with poorly drawn smiling coffee cups. “You uh, don’t actually serve these, do you,” she said, squinting.

“We absolutely do not,” Jacqui said cheerfully. “But it is pink. Don’t worry,” she added. “I’ll steal the recipe for Pink Pleiadeses for the next time you come in.” 

“Right! Next time!” said Aria, giving a smile that was softer than her earlier ones, and a little wondering. Like maybe she hadn’t really expected Jacqui to say yes after all. Jacqui wondered how much of her confidence had been played up. Popstars were probably pretty good at performing, Jacqui figured, and she found the knowledge comforting, that Aria might be as overwhelmed by everything as she was. 

She watched Aria take another tentative half sip of milkshake, and try valiantly to keep her face schooled. “Sorry!” she said, when she saw she had fooled no one. “It’s just. There’s so much sugar.”

“Give it to Mako,” Jacqui advised. “You wanna hang up here for a bit, I can make you something new. On the house.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Aria, setting the milkshake aside. “I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay great. Now everyone go harrass [ Kalcifer ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalcifer) cause they are also supposed to write on of these and haven't. (Or at least check out their stuff I guess.)


End file.
